Ismene Brown

I’m having trouble finding an anti-woman conspiracy in dance

I’m bemused by the outburst of claims that female choreographers are under-represented, held back, or discouraged by ‘institutionalised sexism’ from unveiling their contributions to the richness of British dance.

Only a fortnight ago I was thinking about what to write for my first 2016 piece, and this was the very question on my lips. Why was English National Ballet doing a special all-women choreography programme in 2016 as a protest statement when so many of the best things made in dance last year and the previous year were by female choreographers? But I decided I’d keep that powder dry until ENB come to the stage.

However, this weekend Luke Jennings, the Observer’s campaigning dance critic, let rip about ‘a gender imbalance so egregious, and of such long standing, that it shames the British dance establishment’. His thunderous volley replies to something the choreographer Akram Khan said last week about the number of women choreographers not needing to be increased ‘for the sake of’ a theoretical equality.

That in turn was Khan’s reaction to a conference staged by Rambert Dance last October when the loaded question to debate was: ‘How do we level the playing field for women in choreography?’ A small-scale female choreographer complained that the dance industry was ‘a vertical pathway that’s very hard to climb’ for women.

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